"When I did 'The Cruise' seven years ago on mini-DV tape, there was quite a bit of dropout," Miller says. "Almost every tape had some problem on it, even if it was just a couple of tiny pixels."

Miller shot his latest project on Sony Digital Master tape, designed for DVCAM and mini-DV camcorders. "It was on-the-run. We just threw these tapes in plastic bags that ended up sitting out in the sun in an RV where it was 100 degrees. And we'd move into climates like the Rockies where it was chilly at night. It's not like the tapes had any special protection. There was no climate control. We schlepped the tapes around for months before they ever ended up in a reasonably climate-controlled environment."

"In over 200 hours of footage, there wasn't a single dropout anywhere," says Miller. Even in editing, "some of these tapes are going back-and-forth, back-and-forth. I've noticed absolutely no degeneration whatsoever. It's recording the information as it's meant to be, uncorrupted. It's just reliability, stability, consistency-and no headaches."